Answer the Questions That Matter

What do you need to know to create good content? Understand why your users have come to you in the first place.

We know that the goals of hospital website visitors vary greatly. From paying a bill, to getting flu shot recommendations, to finding information about a heart procedure, your users have very specific (and differing) needs.

You certainly don’t want to waste their time, point them in the wrong direction, or leave their questions unanswered. It’s frustrating for them and bad business for you. Conversely, the less time it takes for you to answer their questions, the more satisfying their user experience and the more likely you are to make a good impression.

Getting your users what they need, and doing it quickly, is the sign of effective UX design and content. But how do you make that happen? By using experience and research to answer two very straightforward but very important questions:

Who are my users?
What do they want to know?

You can use the answers to those questions to create useful and meaningful content.

So how do you do this?

Choose your key personas or segments. Do this for each key service line. Visitors to your heart surgery section may have very different questions than visitors to your imaging page.
Find out what your users goals are. And while you obviously need to research the consumer, don’t forget to talk to your providers. They answer questions all day long.
Brainstorm content and navigation ideas for each service line, specifically how to funnel users to where they need to be as quickly as possible.
Don’t be too clever. Keep your information simple, your page titles straightforward, and your content easy to find.
Get continuous feedback. You are never really done.

Takeaway #1: When deciding what content to create, start by developing the personas for each service line.

Takeaway #2: When doing research, don’t forget to talk to your providers.

Takeaway #3: Keep your content simple and easy to understand. Use the language of your user.